...Meanwhile, back in Oakland, the Raiders are playing for respect in the maligned AFC

GWEN KNAPP, EXAMINER COLUMNIST

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 3, 1995

They pretend not to care, barely to notice. The AFC has no chip on its shoulder, nothing to prove, really, nothing at all. The Raiders will tell you that, one breath before they say: "We always beat them in the Pro Bowl."

The NFC sticks in their subconscious as the impossibly perfect big brother, always neat, polite, bringing home straight A's and varsity letters. In L.A., the image was softened for the Raiders. Sharing a home with the Rams will cut into any inferiority complex.

But now, they're back in the Bay Area, a bridge away from the model children. So far, they have been shielded from the larger world view of football. They have been lavishly welcomed, embraced with a passion reserved for lamented lost loves.

Yet one look at the NFL record books would drown her out, converting a few of those misty water-colored memories into this plain, black-and-white fact: The Raiders are part of a conference that has not won a Super Bowl since 1984, since the year of Mondale-Ferraro, since Cal Ripken Jr. had hair and a brief work history, since Al Davis tolerated Marcus Allen.

This is the baggage that our prodigal sons are dragging home with them. True, they aren't the problem; they won the '84 title. But they aren't the solution, either. They did nothing to spare us the Buffalo Bills, and the team's outmoded passing game reinforced the AFC's head-in-the-sky, quiche-eating reputation.

"Things are changing," says Raiders lineman Kevin Gogan, who spent seven years with Dallas. "Here, we're starting to emphasize the run more."

In Texas, though, Gogan indulged in conference snobbery.

"We always saw the NFC as better, especially in the NFC East," he says. "Our division kept winning the Super Bowl, and we had that great smash-mouth style."

For the most part, you have to drag the Raiders into this debate. Their sense of history stretches back as far as December 1994, when they missed the playoffs altogether. Under the circumstances, they can't gripe about the way San Diego carried the AFC banner into Miami.

Cornerback Terry McDaniel doesn't want to get into it, although he'll admit to rooting for the Chargers in the Super Bowl, just a little, as a matter of conference loyalty. And yes, he has buddies playing in the NFC who dole out grief every now and then.

He can smile through it. He has to play in a Super Bowl before he truly cares who wins.

"Who'd you pick this year?" he asked during an interview at the Raiders' training site. Clearly, he suspected an NFC bias.

Well, actually, no, not definitively. TheDolphins have purchased a lot of talent, and Marino's arm still gives us chills. The Browns and Steelers will mix it up, too, smash-mouth-style. No conference can match this Rust Belt rivalry. Certainly not the Central Division of the NFC, a mushy collection of ill-stocked franchises featuring Barry Sanders and not much else.

McDaniel hears this and smiles a little more. He has not said a word in defense of the AFC, yet a case is building for the conference. The raw material is there.

Al LoCasale, the Raiders' executive assistant, can riff on anything. Turn him loose on the NFC superiority, and you get a compelling argument.

"I think NBC has done a really poor job of promoting its games, compared to CBS when they had football," he says.

"CBS always went with the best games. They pushed the glamour teams. They didn't try to spread it around like NBC. CBS pretended that the AFC didn't exist. You could watch forever without seeing a score from the other conference. Every 20 minutes on NBC, they were cutting away to footage from an NFC game."

LoCasale won't try to pin 11 straight Super Bowl losses on the network, but he does see potential harm in the free-agent market. "When FOX got the NFC and started spending all this money building up an audience, a lot of us were worried that free agents would look at all the publicity and think that's where you had to go for the money and attention," he says.

Finally, he points out that the NFC didn't bash the AFC until the last game of the 1994 season. Of 52 interconference matchups, the NFC won 27, the AFC 25.

The NFL has just three head coaches who have taken a team to a Super Bowl title. Two (Bill Parcells and Don Shula) are in the AFC, one (George Seifert) in the NFC. The NFC whipped the AFC in the preseason, winning 25 out of 44 games. We can't, in good conscience, prefer the conference that excels in exhibitions.

If this sounds like excuse-making, so be it. The doormat conference is part of our family now. We have to wipe off the mud and footprints and see only the word Welcome. We won't wonder why the AFC can't be more like its brother. In return, all we ask is this: Don't mention the Pro Bowl, and send the Bills home early.&lt;